The iKlips from Adam Elements may look like a lowly USB flash drive, but its main purpose it as removable storage for iOS devices. On one end is a USB 3 connector, while at the other, a Lighting connector that plugs into an iPhone and iPad, supplementing any internal storage inside the device.

While we focus a lot on PC and gaming products, I do try to keep an eye out on a variety of different technologies. One of those technologies that we have seen pop up from time to time but has never made it into gaming products is bone conductive audio. A lot of you might remember the jawbone as an example but I also remember a company that I saw at CES back in 2013 called Aftershokz and their headsets for joggers. Well during the holidays as usual as I’m getting spammed with CES emails an email from Aftershokz caught my eye because they introduced a new gaming focused model called the Aftershokz Gamez. While im not a fan of the use of Z’s in the brand and model name I did want to check it out and see what the tech and the product was all about. After spending time with them today I’m going to sit down and go over how they performed so check it out.

In 2015, we had the enviable opportunity of reviewing most of the ASUS Z170 Republic of Gamers (RoG) motherboard lineup, starting with the Maximus VIII Hero, then the Maximus VIII Gene, and lastly the Maximus VIII Impact. Now that we are in 2016, we figured that we might as well continue the trend and start off the year big by reviewing the undisputed flagship model, the Maximus VIII Extreme.

This eight iteration of the Maximus Extreme model retails for about $485 USD / $640 CAD, which is about the same USD price as the Rampage V Extreme when it launched back in December 2014. This high price - which is even worse for us Canadians due to a collapsing dollar - leads to us to have some equally high expectations of this enthusiast-oriented motherboards.

What do you get for that money? Well let's rattle off some specs: 12-phase digital CPU power design with OptiMOS MOSFETs, MicroFine alloy chokes, 10K Black Metallic capacitors, four physical PCI-E x16 slots with support for 2-Way SLI or 4-Way CrossFireX configurations, two PCI-E x1 slots, eight SATA 6Gb/s port and up to two SATA Express ports, one M.2 x4 connector, one U.2 connector, one Intel-powered Gigabit LAN port, and both DisplayPort and HDMI video outputs. There are also four USB 3.0 ports, three USB 3.1 Type-A ports, and one USB 3.1 Type-C port. Rounding out the connectivity is onboard dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi capable of transfer speeds up to 1300Mbps, Bluetooth v4.0 capabilities, and a capable external 3T3R antenna.

Of all the products in the STRIX series, a soundcard touches on the most relevant of all attributes one would associate with its avian name. The STRIX series of soundcards come in three flavours, the STRIX SOAR, the STRIX RAID PRO and the flagship the RAID DLX. The SOAR comes in with 116dB SNR seems to be the standalone product of the RAID PRO, both using the ESS SABRE9006A, though the SOAR does away with the desktop control box to provide extra value to the end user. The RAID DLX comes with an improved SNR (Signal-to-Noise ratio) utilising the ESS SABRE9016, thus is the top bird in the parliament.

When you pick the router you want to own, you can either pick an ordinary router for your setup or a great one if you want just a little more. But there is also a third option and you have the choice to go for something extraordinary. Today I’m taking a closer look a router from the last category as I’m having D-Link’s impressive DIR-890L AC3200 Ultra Wi-Fi router in my testing area.

The DIR-890L brings impressive performance via three bands instead of the normal two bands, and it also comes packed in a stylish design with six antennas for maximum range, coverage, and speed. D-Link’s DIR-890L has a futuristic kind of design that somewhat resembles a drone or spaceship. A lot of the times this kind of designs can go too far, but D-Link seems to have nailed it and hit just the right spot between normal, futuristic, functionality, and design. It looks great!

If you're looking to purchase a powerful, portable and attractive laptop, the $799 (£849, AU$1,799) Dell XPS 13 is a top contender. The notebook features a sleek design, lightweight chassis and a revolutionary display that makes it the smallest 13-inch Ultrabook in its class. In terms of size, this little boxer is actually closer to an 11-inch ultraportable, but it's a powerhouse outfitted with an Intel Core i7 Skylake processor and a fast PCIe solid-state drive (SSD).The XPS 13 may have won the title of best laptop and Ultrabook last year, several worthy competitors have risen to challenge the claim. Lenovo has perfected its 2-in-1 laptop, the $1,199 (£1,449, AU$2,199) Lenovo Yoga 900, and equipped it with enough power to rival Dell's champion. Likewise, Apple has given the $999 (£849, AU$1,549) 13-inch MacBook Air a fresh set of internals and an even longer 12 hours of battery life.Any of these laptops would make for an excellent buy. However, the XPS's innovative display and master class design differentiates it from what is an already-exceptional Ultrabook market.DesignThe Dell XPS 13 truly is a revolutionary device, considering it packs a 13-inch screen into a much smaller frame. It looks deceptively small and, though it feels dense, the ultra-compact machine is light in the hand.Both the top and bottom of the notebook are built from sheets of machined aluminum with a silver anodized finish, similar to the MacBook Air, in sheen and durability. After weeks of tossing the machine about in my travels, it still doesn't show any signs of wear, let alone fingerprints, smudges or scratches.

These garphics cards charts contain benchmark results of numerous recent graphics cards. We've tested the card with three different resolutions, where there are 1080p, 1440p and 2160p. Apart from that we also show live price tags for all models.

HiFiMAN is constantly developing their planar technology, and today, we will take a look at their latest state-of-the-art headphone. It is dubbed the HE-1000 and features a nanometer thick diaphragm, leather headband, and milled aluminum. We take HiFiMAN's most audacious and pricey headphone for a ride!

HP notebooks are known to many users as daily or as business products, this as they didn't have any or that many notebooks specifically targeted at the gamer community. From the press release in October we at MadShrimps were intrigued by the direction HP took, so it was worthwhile to test the new gaming notebook and see what it is made off. Best of all HP told us that this new announced product would be very competitive in price too; now I'm an avid gamer too and have never been so found of notebooks being able to replace a high end desktop. Maybe the HP Pavilion Gaming notebook could make me change my mind?

Synaptics' IronVeil is a tiny fingerprint sensor module that serves as the foundation for a variety of new authentication techniques for home and business users alike. We've spent a couple weeks with a pre-production IronVeil mouse, and we've explored how it might be used in practice.

Synaptics was been working on a comprehensive, yet simple to use, fingerprint authentication technology that the company hopes will make a big splash with gamers and corporate users alike. Although it’s had a couple of names over the last year or so, Synaptics’ upcoming IronVeil technology -- as it is now known -- is just about ready for prime time. We’ve had the chance to play with a pre-production Ttesports Black V2 mouse featuring IronVeil for a couple of weeks and definitely think the technology has merit, for a few reasons...

Synaptics has been working on integrating different sensors into different products to make them more user friendly. One of those sensors is a fingerprint reader, similar to what we are used to on mobile devices. Working with Thermaltake, LiteOn, EVGA and others, Synaptics has integrated their latest fingerprint sensor, IronVeil, into various mice. Read on to find out more about Synaptics IronVeil Technology!

Let us dive right into the hardware on this little NAS. The CPU is an STM STiH412 32-bit dual-core processor with 1.5GHz and floating point unit. The hardware transcoding engine is capable of the H.265 (HEVC), MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-2, and VC-1 codecs and it can work with a maximum resolution of up to 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) at up to 30 frames per second. It allows you to transcode 4K videos to 1080p, making them suitable for all screens and bandwidths whether they are local media players or remote mobile devices. In addition, you can also stream original 4K resolution videos to your multimedia player or 4K TV within a local network environment. The CPU is backed by 1GB DDR3 memory which should be sufficient for its area of operation.

With those hardware specifications, the DS216play is able to deliver an average speed of 107 MB/s when reading and 91 MB/s when writing on a RAID 1 configuration from a Windows environment. The built-in floating-point unit enhances the overall capability of the main CPU and it is particularly advantageous in speeding up thumbnail creations when uploading a lot of photos or videos.

One of the main features of a NAS like this is to stream media files to a whole lot of devices. The DS216play can act as a DLNA certified DMS (Digital Media Server), allowing you to stream multimedia contents, such as music, photos, and videos, to DLNA compliant devices. It can also stream to pretty much any other device such as mobile phones and tablets, TVs, and stereos. Synology also offers support for Samsung TV, Apple TV, Google Chromecast and Roku players.

After using the same DDR3 standard for eight years, RAM manufacturers everywhere have begun the process of rolling out their latest memory chips in the form of DDR4. But what benefits (if any) does DDR4 have over DDR3 in real-world applications, and are they worth the increased cost?

We have poPepcom brought us in touch this year with many new products and companies. Standing out on an innovation front to us was Zagg. They introduced us to the Flex Arc Wireless Headset. Which will be available in February of 2016, and we have the exclusive review here!